"From this moment until that in which the enemy shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the service of the armies. The young men shall go to battle; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothing and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old linen into lint; the aged shall betake themselves to the public places in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach the hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic."

--The Levee en masse, August 23, 1793

La Triviata

Late in World War I, U-38 sank a British transport in a surface attack, only to be herself sunk when the sinking vessel exploded, propelling a truck that was being carried as deck cargo onto the u-boatís deck.

In the Spring of 1942 the Army moved so quickly to negotiate and close a deal to acquire Arlington Hall Junior College, a posh finishing school, near Washington, for use as a cryptanalysis center that the troops actually began moving in even before all of the young ladies had moved out.

So parsimonious was King Philip II of Spain that when the Duke of Alba died in 1583, he was in debt to the tune of 500,000 ducats, which he had borrowed during his tenure in command of Spanish Army of Flanders, on which his estate was forced to pay annual interest charges of 35,000 ducats.

During 1942 the Omaha Chapter of the Future Farmers of America collected 445,000 pounds of scrap metal for the war effort.

The first American to attain the rank of admiral was one George Paddan, of New York, a mercenary serving in the Russian Navy, who was promoted to rear admiral by Tsar Peter the Great in 1700.

A B-17 carried 4 tons of bombs and 1.5 tons of machine gun ammo.

During World War I the British Army actually developed a special sight that permitted the 3-inch Stokes trench mortar to be used against aircraft, though there is no record of this adaption ever resulting in a downed aircraft.

Rather than be cashiered for incompetence, in 1840 Otto von Bismarck resigned from the Prussian Army.